Collective Guilt – Should it Exempt the Jews but Engulf the Muslims?

"The Passion of the Christ” – a film of Mel Gibson, has been scheduled to open on February 25, 2004 covering about 2,000 screen. Ever since its preview, it has drawn criticism from some Jewish leaders and organiztions.

Among the critics, two are very powerful – Rabbi Marvin Heir, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, and Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League in New York. Their view is that the film depicts Jews as bearing "collective guilt" for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. They are fearful that this induced sense of "collective guilt" would revive a new wave of anti-Semitism because of the gruesome depiction of the crucifixion.

The term "anti-Semitism", though widely used, is a misnomer. Semitic is an adjective that describes a race and its languages originating from the Asiatic Middle East covering a geographical area from the Sinai to Iraq, and from Syria to Yemen. In fact, most Iraqis are more Semites than the Ashkenazi Jews who migrated en-masse from Europe after the WW II. No doubt, during those Biblical times, any Jew with blue eyes and blonde hairs, as we see these days, could have made the Scandinavian gentiles blush with futile envy.

In recent times, no precedent of Semite extermination is more gruesome and nerve-wrecking than the carnage inflicted on the Semites of Iraq – they are mostly Muslims. Obviously Marvin Heir and Abraham Foxman’s hunt for anti-Semites could logically include George Bush and Tony Blair as well. It is an irony that the countries that were the torch-bearears for the formation of the United Nations, eventually called it "irrelevant" just to satisfy their war-euphoria.

Frankly speaking, Marvin Heir and Abraham Foxman’s apprehension of the revival anti-Jewish feeling in the minds of some fanatic Christians may not be too far from reality. Evidently, they have reasons to be cautious about those periods of torments and persecution that the Jewish people suffered in Europe.

But long before the birth of Christianity, the Jewish people suffered many miseries throughout their history. In fact, with the Roman general Pompie’s march to Jerusalem in 63 BC initiated their miseries for about 2,000 years. Ever since, the whole Jewish community of Jerusalem was under an occupation army who were polytheists and pagans.

Even king Herod – a Jewish descend, had no mercy for his own people. Like most Jewish aristocracy, he was just a Hellenized Jew and remained a puppet in the Roman hands.

Sparked by the Jewish war against the occupation army in 66 AD, the whole city of Jerusalem was burnt to ashes and over 300,000 were killed. The only structure still remains there is the Walling Wall. The devout Jews come here and perform their prayer with rocking head and heap while reciting their prayers.

Jewish history, written by the Jewish scholars, tells the readers that during this time, thousands of Jews were massacred. Many thousands of them were exported to Roman Empire and were sold in the slave market. Only a few, who could ran away from the massacre, took shelter in Morocco and around. Then some later days, they crossed the Gibraltar and were in high positions under the Muslim Empire in Spain. These are the Sephardic Jews we know today.

After the Norman invasion in 1066 AD, a large number of Jews fled from Europe to England. In early twelfth century, Henry became the heir of every Jew and claimed for himself a percentage of all their profits in trade.

At the coronation of Richard in 1189 Jewish massacres and tortures formed an amusement item of the planned celebration. By the end of the twelfth century, Richard had herded all the Jews in to the larger cities to keep close watch on their transactions.

Richard’s successor, John created a ghetto in the city of Lincoln, setting up the Jews as the king’s property and making it illegal for anyone to injure the king’s Jews, just as it was illegal to harm his dogs and cattle.

The entire history of the Jews in the Middle Ages was marked by extreme persecution leading to the Holocaust of the Forties. Since then, much water has flown under the bridge.

Israel was created by the British as a reward by British Prime Minister, Balfour to Weizmann for his invention of artificial acitone – a chemical substance needed for producing the cordite explosive in artillery shells. Those explosives are still active on the streets of Palestine.

With the creation of Israel, world peace took a different shape. Tension and threats remained high in between both Arabs and Israelis. Several skirmishes and wars were fought to the advantages of Israel. But most importantly, the anti Jewish feeling perpetuated in Europe and even within the North American continent. There was hardly any sermon in the Church during the fifties and sixties that spared the name of the Biblical Judas who betrayed Jesus for only 30 Roman coins.

History references, mostly from old magazines, indicate that constant lobbying by the powerful Jewish organizations in the US convinced Pope Paul VI to visit the Holy Places in Israel and the West Bank in January 1964. In October 1969, Israeli Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, was granted an audience by the Pope. In January 1973, the Prime Minister of Israel – Golda Meir had an audience with the Pope dealing with Israel-Vatican relations. The Vatican had also its interest in the internationalisation of Jerusalem.

All these visits, interactions and mutual interests eventually softened the Catholic sermons and de-emphasized the role of Judas in the crucifixion of Jesus. Ever since the gaining of the Vatican’s blessings in putting a damper on the "collective guilt", the Zionist controlled media, with gleaming eureka, set their agenda for the vilification of Islam and there was none to oppose it. Obviously human rights and defamation laws were not geared to serving Muslims’ interests.

Today the West, once sensitive to Jewish presence in them, proudly defines themselves as a Judaeo-Christian Society. No Shakespeare ever writes another "Merchant of Venice" and no European audiences ever throw eggs to a Jewish character in a theatrical drama.

Even the Pope apologizes to the Jews. The Christians bear a constant feeling of guilt for the Holocaust and the guilt is kept vibrant by the Zionist’s Holocaust industries. Besides, The Jews, in the fear of sinking their golden bonds, declined to put any blame on the Christian for the Holocaust – it was, rather, the Nazis – a new religion of Hitler with no connection to Christianity.

With mending an unprecedented bond of Judaeo-Christian brotherhood, most media, controlled by the Jewish conglomerates of the West, have gained an enormous success in depicting Islam as a misfit for the world and the menacing threat to the modern civilization. The word "Islam" has been turned into a synonym of "terrorism." The Jewish euphoria of demonizing Islam got its highest peak in recent times with the staging of the 9/11 incidents.

By the phrase "collective guilt", these two giant Jewish organizations: Simon Wiesenthal Center and Anti-Defamation League, propound that even if the gruesome death of Jesus was caused by a few Jews, especially Caiaphas and his entourage, a ‘wholesale’ blame should not be imputed against all the Jews of that time, and drag it for two millenniums.

Fair enough – perhaps no rational critic of the incidents surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus will differ with their contention. Having said so, will Rabbi Marvin Hier and Abraham Foxman suggest an identical view when vilification of Islam comes in their arena of concern? Assuming that the 9/11 culprits were a few fanatic-Muslims – would these two gentlemen oppose the demonization of a billion Muslims with the same token of concern, centred on the avoidance of imputing "collective guilt"?

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